Pathways to Pleasure

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Pathways to Pleasure

Join me in discovering your unique pathways to pleasure...

I’m lying in bed as I write this: Candles burning, warm tea by my side, loungewear, purring feline, sleeping canine. I figure, if I’m going to teach you anything about pleasure, it’s best to be residing in mine.

As a kid and teenager, my sexual education consisted of, “wait until you’re married,” followed up with alarming information about STIs and the basics of reproduction. Nothing about pleasure or the complexities of intimate relationships. I felt profoundly alone when it came to sex and relationships, and totally mystified. I’d explored my own body enough to know what felt good, and I’d had a few lovers that had opened doors to new sexual pleasure for me, but I had a feeling more was possible if only I knew where to look – or touch.

Three years ago, a dear friend and mentor of mine began putting together a group of women – The Women’s Temple – to explore erotic arts together. We gathered monthly to not only talk about our sexuality, but to work hands on with one another, to witness one another, and to be in our pleasure together. The combination of information, community, and guidance transformed my sexuality, and my entire life.

I came out of that two-year experience deeply rooted in my body, connected to my pleasure, sensuality, and sexuality, able to communicate about sex with partners in new ways, and with some key resources and practices that continue to expand my sexuality to this day. I also came away with a deep capacity to meet the intensity of my life head on, to tend to my needs and desires, to metabolize grief, anger, and suffering, and with an unshakable trust in the world and my place in it.

Pathways to Pleasure brings together all of the elements that made The Women’s Temple so transformative for me – clear and simple information about pleasure and anatomy, guidance, practice, and permission, and a community of women devoted to exploring and telling the truth about their sexual pleasure and themselves – in an accessible, easy to digest, virtual format. We won't touch one another, do any live demonstrations, or self-pleasure together, but we will share the intimate details of our experiences.

In the 10 weeks that I’m inviting you to explore your pleasure, I won’t shame or should you. I won’t be telling you how frequently you should be coming, or what kind of orgasms you should or could experience. I won’t tell you the best way to touch yourself, or share with you the one magic secret to unlock your deepest sexual pleasure.

That’s not what I’m up to.

Instead, I will offer you maps and guides to facilitate your own explorations into the wild territory of your pleasure. We'll include your self, your soma (body), your sex, and your soul. I’ll encourage you to ask questions, follow your curiosity, and set up experiments so that you can uncover the deep pleasure that lives in you. You’ll get to share your experiences, frustrations, excitement, shame, and pleasure in a closed group of like-minded women.

This is about so much more than sex. It's about the cultivation of our sexual, generative, creative, life-force. The radical reclaiming of our bodies and our pleasure. We need this. Our relationships need this. The world needs this.

Pathways to Pleasure is currently underway!

Leave your email below and I'll contact you with a special, pre-registration offer as soon as the next round begins.

Email Address

I respect and honor your privacy

Thank you!

Maps and Guides

As women, we barely know the territory of our bodies and our pleasure. I’ll share with you the full magic of our anatomy of arousal. There’s so much more going on down there than your clitoris and your vagina. So. Much. More.

Practices + Experiments

We tend to touch ourselves the same way, every time. Self-Pleasuring is one of the most habituated behaviors in our repertoire. Our pathways to pleasure are wired in our brains and our bodies, and it can be challenging and frustrating to expand them. If you want to experience more pleasure with yourself and with partners, you have to start changing it up! We’ll explore different ways to contact your anatomy of arousal, and to incorporate breath and movement into your pleasure so that you can expand the depth and breadth of your pleasure map.

Community

This is the part of this course that has me most excited, and that has the most potential for transformation. In my personal journey, sexual and otherwise, nothing has had a bigger impact than community. Sharing these experiences, witnessing friends in their pleasure, seeing what it is they do with their bodies, hearing them describe it, and then getting to ask them questions about it changed everything. Having people other than lovers touch my body, offering suggestions and opportunities, reminding me to breathe, and showing me the way through experiences I might have backed away from opened doors and pathways to pleasure that I didn’t even know existed. While this course is virtual, and we won’t be self-pleasuring together, or touching one another, the act of sharing our experiences and curiosities will be nothing short of revolutionary.

Whether you are brand new to sexual exploration, or a seasoned practitioner of erotic arts, you will learn and discover new things about your body.

We'll Dive Into...

We'll Dive Into...

– What is Self-Pleasuring?– Shame, embarrassment, guilt– The personal, familial, and cultural stories we carry about pleasure– Anatomy of Arousal– Your erotic map and blueprint– Embodiment– Strokes to experience pleasure– Community support and care– Ways to use breath, movement, and sound to unlock your body– Sex Magick– Pleasure Rituals– Permission– Toys, tools, and practices with a partner– And more...

This will be a co-creative exploration. I have some things we will definitely touch on, and your questions, interests, desires, and curiosities will help shape our experience together.

10Virtual Group Sessions (via Zoom)

1.5 hours each

Format:

I will teach, and we will save plenty of time for questions, coaching, shares, reflection, and feedback, not necessarily in that order.

Recordings, Outlines, Homework

All on a course page with video recordings and downloadable audio recordings, guided practices, and downloadable homework and outlines – available for a year.

Secret Facebook Group

To stay in touch with one another between sessions and after the summer is over.

An embodied experience and understanding of your anatomy of arousal.

New ways to touch yourself and find pleasure.

Maps of the wild territories of pleasure and erotic energy.

Community and connection with women to support, challenge, embrace, and encourage you.

Tools you can use to continue to unfold your sexuality, layer by layer.

The power to tap into your desires, name what you want, and create the sensual and sexual pleasure you crave.

And more...

Session I: Intentions and Agreements

We'll introduce ourselves, share our intention, and form the agreements that we all want and need to feel safe in this container together. I'll introduce genital breathing, and give you the basic outline you need to create your personal Self-Pleasure Practice.

Session II: Creating your Pleasure Vision

Before we dive into specifics of cultivating and expanding pleasure, we'll review what our pleasure has been throughout our lives, take stock of where it is today, and then envision the future that we long for in our sensual and sexual selves.

Session III: Your Nervous System and Pleasure

What does your nervous system have to do with pleasure? A LOT! Learn how to use your nervous system to understand your sexual and sensual response, and ways to play with it to increase your pleasure.

Session IV: External Anatomy of Arousal

We all learn about our reproductive anatomy, but do you know the workings of your anatomy of arousal? Did you know that women have as much erectile tissue as men?! We'll dive into our external anatomy of arousal and ways to access it.

Session V: Your G-Spot

This part of your internal anatomy of arousal is not a myth or a mystery. It's location is quite predictable. How you like it touched and where is yet to be discovered. We'll discuss the complex anatomy of your G-Spot, what it does, and ways to touch it.

Session VI: Internal Anatomy of Arousal

Have you heard of your A-Spot? P-Spot? Perineal Sponge? There's more than just your G-Spot! We'll uncover it all, along with the most important thing in your sexual and sensual explorations: curiosity.

Session VII: Anal Anatomy and Touch

Our final anatomy lesson will dive into this tender, taboo, highly-innervated terrain. Your anus can be a gateway into intense pleasure, and deep relaxation. Learn the basics of touch here that can revolutionize your experience of your anus.

Session VIII: Show and Tell

We'll play show and tell! Not with our bodies, but with ways that we touch them, ways that we find and access our pleasure. You'll get to share your experiences and learn from one another in fun, fascinating, and surprising ways. There are infinite ways to find and cultivate pleasure.

Session IX: Other ways to play and expand your pleasure

By this point, we've learned new ways to touch ourselves to expand our pleasure, but there's so much more to play with! Breath, movement, awareness, timing, pausing, waiting, to name a few. We'll also explore Sex Magick: the possibility that your sexual energy is bigger than you and your partner(s), and is a way to tap into our deep connectedness with all of life.

Session X: Integration

We'll review where we've been over the last 10 weeks, and you'll have the space to share what you've learned, where you are now, and what you want for yourself and your pleasure for the future.

This Course Is For you If...

This Course Is For you If...

You identify as a woman and have female sexual anatomy.*

You want to learn more about your anatomy of arousal.

You feel stuck in your sexuality and pleasure. You hear of others experiences with pleasure, and you wonder if it’s a myth, if you’re doing it right, if you’re missing out on things.

You want guidance and education around a topic that no one really teaches us about. Ever.

You are ready to explore, try new things, show up, and share yourself.

You are craving community with women who are devoted to their own pleasure.

You are ready to make changes in your life.

You are willing to look at yourself, your patterns, your behaviors.

*This group is specifically and exclusively for woman identified females (of any orientation). Women have a unique perspective of their bodies, pleasure, and the social constructs around it all – as do men and other genders. If you are a man, or identify somewhere else in the world of gender, let me know and I can point you to some other resources. There are magnificent people in the world working with men and with sexual and gender minorities, and I work with all genders and orientations in my private practice.

This is not all rosy and fun. I haven’t skipped down this path, bright and shiny, breathless from all the earth-shattering orgasms I’ve had. Opening to and discovering your sexual self, outside the scripts that you’ve been handed by family, media, culture, and religion, can seismically shift the foundation of your life. Everything you think you know about yourself and your place in the world might come crumbling down. When you open yourself to one experience and begin to surrender more fully to life as it moves through you, you open yourself to everything. Grief. Rage. Ecstasy. Rapture.

This is also deeply political. Knowing about your pleasure and your body, and sharing your experience with community rather than sequestering it in your bedroom under your sheets and your shame is a radical, subversive, act.

Don't Take My Word For It

Don't Take My Word For It

Alyssa has a magical knack for creating group spaces that are at once profound AND playful, reverent AND fun, deep AND delightfully naughty. No matter how taboo the territory, she makes it feel safe and trustworthy. That is: I trust her — and she helps me trust myself. She doesn’t just light the passageway — she walks it with you, modeling the courage and grace this work takes. She’s helped me get brave, get honest, and get intimate with myself (and others) in incredibly rewarding ways. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

– ANGELA

I walked into Alyssa's course with some uncertainty and hesitancy, unsure of what this process would actually look like and fearful of what it could bring up within me. Throughout this course, Alyssa has served as a fearless guide, listener and observer. She enlightens us (her students/clients) with information and data, and regales us with her own self-discovery and exploration. She in no means presents a front or pretense of being all knowing, but comes to the table with a playful curiosity, and a wide open mind to listen and inquire alongside us. You can tell that she is learning through the process and taking in her own and her clients' experiences to mold and improve and adapt in order to best support her clients. Alyssa has not only provided a safe and welcoming space for self-expression, but also one of community and connection.Through breathing practices, home-play, visuals, group shares, and feedback, Alyssa incorporates multiple avenues of paths to connecting to one's own body and acknowledging others. It is never forced, but always an invitation. Thank you, Alyssa, for shedding light on taboo, stigma, and fear, and approaching sexuality and pleasure with grace and curiosity.

– Laura, 27

It's incredible to experience a community of women who are open and accepting when talking about sexuality. Everyone has their own edge, and you can choose to reveal as much or as little of yourself as you want to. Alyssa provides an extremely safe and welcoming space to explore your relationship to your own body and your sexuality. Just try it; you won't regret it!

- Karen, 33, Denver

... the teachings were rich and deep and easily accessible, the discussions went beyond the physical realm to the emotional, mental, and spiritual realms, and the pleasure I'm experiencing now is beyond what I dreamed possible when I started the course. I am not exaggerating.

- Kathryn, 69, retired educator, current fitness instructor

FAQs

FAQs

What if I can’t make the live calls, or have to miss one?

If you can't make any of the live calls, please reach out before signing up. This is meant to be a group, not simply a class. If you have to miss one or two, or if something comes up, no problem! Life happens, and you'll be able to catch the recording.

Are the calls confidential?

Yes! In our first call, we will make agreements around privacy and confidentiality so that everyone feels safe and contained.

How do I know if Pathways to Pleasure is right for me?

If reading everything above is eliciting a response in your body – warmth, sweat, rush, tingle, buzz – tune in, and listen. You might get an answer. You could be feeling fear, excitement, a lean in, a repulsion. Any and all of those are possible signs that you are ready. If you aren’t sure, send me an email (alyssa@thiseroticlife.org) and we can set up a time to talk. We’ll explore where you are at and what you are wanting to see if the Pathways to Pleasure is a good fit at this time in your life.

What’s your refund policy?

I offer a 75% refund within one week of the course start date, no questions asked. After that, no refunds will be granted.